Rohingya Culture is Not Myanma: General Hlaing

Rohingya Muslim refugees in the Bangladeshi (AFP/File Photo)

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres has censured recent remarks by Myanmar’s army chief against minority Rohingya Muslims, hinting that state authorities in the Southeast Asian country are involved in the incitement of hatred against the Muslim community.

Farhan Haq, a deputy spokesperson for Guterres, said on Monday that the U.N. secretary general had been “shocked” at media reports of General U Min Aung Hlaing’s recent remark that the Rohingya were “Bengalis” that “do not have the characteristics or culture in common with the ethnicities of Myanmar.”

Backed by Myanmar’s government, the Myanmarese military and Buddhist extremists launched a heavy-handed crackdown against the Muslim minority in Rakhine State in late 2016. That campaign intensified in August 2017.

Myanmar’s government troops have been committing killings, making arbitrary arrests, and carrying out arson attacks in Muslim villages in Rakhine.

About 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled the western state to Bangladesh since last August.

Before the campaign of violence, which killed many and drove almost all of the other Muslims out, the Rohingya had lived in Myanmar for generations but were denied citizenship and branded illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, hence the word “Bengalis.”

The UN has described the Muslim community as the most persecuted minority in the world.

Guterres further said it was “critical that conditions are put in place to ensure that the Rohingya are able to return home voluntarily, in safety and in dignity.”

Myanmar has struck a deal with Bangladesh — where many Rohingya Muslims have fled to fearing for their lives — to have the Muslims returned. But the Rohingya refugees say there is no guarantee that they will be safe back in Rakhine and refuse to return.

The Myanmarese government has already uprooted Rohingya villages in Rakhine and shuttled Buddhists to the area. It has also built military camps there.

This article has been adapted from its original source.